Gus Grissom

Virgil Ivan Grissom (3 April 1926 – 27 January 1967), more widely known as Gus Grissom, was one of the original NASA Project Mercury astronauts and a United States Air Force pilot. He was the second American to fly into space. Grissom was killed along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a training exercise and pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at the Kennedy Space Center. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and, posthumously, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Quotes

 * If we die we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.
 * On the dangers and importance of the mission of going to the moon in Gemini : A Personal Account of Man's Venture Into Space (1968) by Virgil I. Grissom


 * Do good work.
 * The entirety of a speech given by Grissom to the employees of General Dynamics, builders of the Atlas rocket. (Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, Neal Thompson, 2007, p. 239)